This invention relates to a device for diagnosing body cavity interiors with ultrasonic waves wherein an ultrasonic wave transmitting medium can be put in and out and an opening end facing the outside is sealed with a closing member which can be opened and closed.
An ultrasonic wave diagnosing device wherein ultrasonic waves are transmitted and received to diagnose acoustic information within a body cavity has recently come to be used together with an endoscope wherein the inserted part is inserted into the body cavity so as to be able to optically observe the body cavity interior or to cure it by using a forceps.
In this ultrasonic wave diagnosing device, when ultrasonic wave pulses are projected into a body, for example, form the body surface and the projected ultrasonic waves propagate, they will be reflected by a discontinuous boundary surface of an acoustic impedance represented by the product of the density of the medium and the sound velocity. Therefore, the above mentioned reflected ultrasonic wave pulse waves can be received and such acoustic information as the reflection intensity can be utilized for a diagnosis.
As compared with an X-ray device, such an ultrasonic wave diagnosingdevice has many advantages in that information on a living body soft structure can be easily obtained without using a forming agent, that the living body structure will not be destroyed by radioactive, and that the device is easier to handle and is less dangerous. Further, with the recent improvements of the quality and quantity of the information generated by the progress of the technique on ultrasonic waves, this device is becoming popular as a clinical diagnosing device in the medical field.
In comparison diagnosis wherein ultrasonic wave pulses are transmitted and received on the above mentioned body surface, a method of diagnosing body cavity interiors with ultrasonic waves has been developed wherein ultrasonic wave pulses are transmitted and received in a position near a living body organ within the body cavity. In such a method, high frequency ultrasonic waves which are (comparatively) large in attenuation with propagation can be transmitted and received. Many advantages result such as information of a disintegratability and high precision can be obtained and that the method will not be influenced by a hypodermic fat layer or the like interposed between objects and therefore this method will be used more and more in the future. It is general that this body cavity interior ultrasonic wave diagnosing device to be used as introduced into a body cavity is used integrally with an endoscope as an optically observing means or as fitted with a removable endoscope (optical sighting tube).
In the above mentioned body cavity interior ultrasonic wave diagnosing device, an ultrasonic wave oscillator or the like transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves is contained within a probe head coated with a jacket cover on the tip side of an ultrasonic probe to be introduced into a body cavity and a transmitting medium transmitting ultrasonic waves is put in to fill the space around the ultrasonic wave oscillator or the like and, when bubbles are mixed into the transmitting medium or the characteristics of the transmitting medium deteriorate, the image quality of the obtained ultrasonic wave fault image will reduce and therefore the operations of removing the bubbles and putting in and out the transmitting medium will be required. However, in a conventional body cavity interior ultrasonic wave diagnosing device, the above mentioned operations have been difficult.